Sassafrass - folk fantasy a cappellahttp://www.sassafrassmusic.com
Wed, 21 Jan 2015 17:31:56 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Sassafrass: Trickster & King to perform in Santa Fehttp://www.sassafrassmusic.com/sassafrass-trickster-king-to-perform/
http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/sassafrass-trickster-king-to-perform/#commentsTue, 17 Jun 2014 19:18:40 +0000http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/?p=1748[...]]]>Ada Palmer and Lauren Schiller frequently perform together as the duo: “Sassafrass: Trickster & King.” We call it that because Odin and Loki are both tricksters, and both kings, in their way, so the double name invokes both characters.

The next concert by “Sassafrass: Trickster and King” will be at George R. R. Martin’s Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe on June 22nd (7 PM), as part of the reading by Jo Walton. We’re very excited to be coming – Ada has been touring with Jo all summer and singing at her readings, but Lauren is coming for just this performance in Santa Fe. We will sing some pieces that go thematically with Jo’s new book My Real Children, and some Norse songs to go with her Norse-themed poetry, which she is reading. Should be quite the event!

We will also perform at Loncon (Worldcon) in London in August.

]]>http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/sassafrass-trickster-king-to-perform/feed/1Happy Ragnarok, Everyone!http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/happy-ragnarok-everyone/
http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/happy-ragnarok-everyone/#commentsSat, 22 Feb 2014 15:08:58 +0000http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/?p=1734[...]]]>100 days ago, it was predicted, based on signs and portents, that today, Feb 22nd 2014 would be the long-foretold day of Ragnarok. And while we haven’t heard any trumpets sound, cocks crow or hounds howl, it seems an appropriate day to share fresh progress toward our long-awaited Sundown…

First, a fun thing to share:

Sassafrass’s composer Ada Palmer has just started writing articles for Tor.com, and has written a special Ragnarok-themed article to celebrate the 22nd. Those familiar with our music will recognize many of its thoughts and themes:

Our video director is close to a final cut of the DVD footage, and expects the digital video to be finished in March. After that it will need to have menus, navigation and packaging design, but it is certainly on schedule for our projected June completion date. I have seen a few clips from the edited footage myself and they are very powerful, with the multiple cameras providing a great range of close-ups and full-stage shots.

Audio recording is also in high gear. Polishing and finalizing the tracks after we record them is a slow process, so we have not completed any polished tracks since Longer in Stories than Stone which we shared in October, but we have now recorded the vast majority of the audio, with only a few smaller sections left to record. For the present, we’re deep in the sound editing gruntwork, and working slowly and methodically to make sure the tracks come out sounding their best. The largest and most complicated piece, Sundown, is in the very final phase of post-production, just undergoing final sound balancing to make sure every lyric track is clear and crisp. Many of the other songs are much farther from completion, but I’ve recently gotten to hear the raw recordings for Gift of Life, Here’s to Valhalla and the new five-part version of Hearthfire, and I am frankly blown away by how much clearer and richer they sound than any of our past albums. In particular, our new techniques are letting the different simultaneous lyric lines be much clearer, so you can finally actually hear all the words in all the separate parts in the big five and six line pieces. The exponential increase in effort and cost for these recordings is 110% worth-it!

In addition to the main CD and DVD, work is also proceeding nicely on the songbooks, posters and a few other details that have not yet been announced, so we hope to have more exciting news in the next months. Meanwhile we hope you’ll sit back and enjoy this beautiful Ragnarok day. And keep your axe and helmet close at hand for the occasion, just in case a certain unusually-sized puppy comes out to play today…

Ada and Lauren had a great time at Fencon in Dallas at the beginning of the month followed by an excellent house concert with Heather Dale and S.J. Tucker with local friends new and old. Both were fabulous and we hope to return to Fencon again as well as host more house concerts the next time the Heather Dale band or S.J. Tucker come through Texas.

Lauren and Ada are also preparing to go to OVFF next weekend where we’ll be performing Ship of Stone in the Pegasus concert. (Lauren will also be pretending to be a drum set for another nominee.) We’re looking forward to seeing everyone there! If you won’t make it, don’t forget that pre-convention voting is open until midnight Pacific Time on Monday, October 21, 2013, so if you haven’t voted yet, go listen and do so soon!

All of Sassafrass has been working hard on recording this month from our various locations; final editing is almost complete for the title song Sundown, and we’re making great progress with recording Hearthfire, A New World, Here’s to Valhalla, and If I Could Ask You.

]]>http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/a-busy-october/feed/0Teaching Albums Completehttp://www.sassafrassmusic.com/teaching-albums-complete/
http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/teaching-albums-complete/#commentsWed, 25 Sep 2013 20:07:00 +0000http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/?p=1694[...]]]>We have now completed and launched the two digital teaching albums which were promised as Kickstarter stretch goals. These albums take the songs apart and present each voice and combination of voices individually, so you can hear them alone, making it easier to understand and, especially, to learn these complex pieces. You can stream the music online for free, but each $5 album also comes with downloadable PDFs of the sheet music, lyrics sheets, a MIDI file for computer playback, and a PDF of notes by the composer discussing the piece and its sources.

The Futhark Song Teaching Collection contains a whopping 32 tracks combining the different subsections of the harmony in all different combinations. This makes it easier to understand the modal harmony, and the explanatory notes discuss not only the origins and meaning of the runes, but give a lay introduction to modal music and discuss how modal elements are used in this and other songs in the Sundown collection. I heartily encourage you to listen to Longer in Stories than Stone again after reading the discussion of how its modal harmonics work.

The My Brother, My Enemy Teaching Collection features one track with Odin’s voice dominant and Loki’s soft, and one with Loki’s voice dominant and Odin’s soft so you can follow each character individually, as well as the combined final recording (the same version that is on the Sundown album). Its notes discuss the historical sources, some of the nuances and references in the lyrics, and talk about how Loki and fire are connected, in the myths, and in the Sundown cycle.

Check out these streaming samples:

]]>http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/teaching-albums-complete/feed/0Longer in Stories than Stone – Final Cut Shared Streaminghttp://www.sassafrassmusic.com/1680/
http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/1680/#commentsTue, 17 Sep 2013 03:57:32 +0000http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/?p=1680[...]]]>To thank the community for Sassafrass’s Pegasus award nominations, we are temporarily sharing the fresh-off-the-digital-presses final cut of the Sundown finale chorus “Longer in Stories than Stone.” It is available streaming only, and will remain online until the end of October, in celebration of the Ohio Valley Filk Festival (host of the Pegasus Awards.) This is the finished final track, of which a clip appears on the Sundown: Preview album, and the whole thing will be on the finished Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok CD. This gives a real taste of the better quality recording we have been working so hard on, to make the finished CD a real step above our past releases. (Thank you again Kickstarter backers!) Enjoy, and remember to also scroll down to see the streaming video from Balticon!

The cover illustration, featuring portraits of group members Ruth, Lila, Emily, Lauren and Matt, comes from “The Chronicle” a card inspired by Sassafrass (and by this song in particular), which appears in the “New Tarot,” a project authored by Warren Tusk and illustrated by Leslie Minnis. A “sequel” to the classic Tarot, the New Tarot is a 78-card Tarot-structured oracle deck about exploring the world and achieving your dreams. Learn more about the New Tarot at: www.kickstarter.com/projects/361457705/the-new-tarot

]]>http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/1680/feed/0Peasus Nominations; Worldcon, Fencon, House Filkhttp://www.sassafrassmusic.com/peasus-nominations-worldcon-fencon-house-filk/
http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/peasus-nominations-worldcon-fencon-house-filk/#commentsSun, 08 Sep 2013 16:57:17 +0000http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/?p=1669[...]]]>Sassafrass is delighted to announce that we have again been nominated for the Pegasus Awards for Excellence in Filking. This year Sassafrass has again been nominated for Best Performer, and our composer, Ada Palmer, has, for the first time, been nominated for best Composer/Songwriter.

In celebration of the nomination, and to give people a better sample of the full on-stage performance experience of Sundown, we are temporarily releasing this preview of “Longer in Stories than Stone” from the Balticon debut performance. This video uses the footage from our professional video cameras, and is close to a final cut, but still awaiting some final post-production fixes to details like color tinting and digital zoom. We hope you all enjoy this sample of the performance, and the taste it gives of what we can look forward to when the DVD is finally finished:

The Pegasus awards are an exciting time, when new, exciting creations from around the filk community are gathered and shared. We enourage all our friends to visit the Pegasus website to hear samples of all the other great songs, composers and performers who have also been nominated.

In addition, our recent performance at Worldcon was a great success. It meant an enormous amount to us to be able to bring Sundown to the unique audience which Worldcon attracts, and to share it with so many friends, old and new. Looking down from the stage and seeing the rapt and often tearful faces of friends was an overwhelming experience for us as we performed. We remain extremely grateful to the backers of our Kickstarter, without whose support we could never have brought the group to Worldcon.

We are also happy to announce two upcoming TX performances:

Concert at Fencon (Dallas), Saturday October 5th, preliminarily scheduled for 6 PM. Only two Sassafrass members will be present, Lauren and Ada, so we will concentrate on duet pieces and some of our rarely-performed two-part adaptations of more complex works.

House Filk on Thursday October 10th, in College Station TX, hosted by Lauren and Ada and featuring Heather Dale and S.J. Tucker! We are delighted to be hosting these wonderful guest performers for our first TX area House Filk, and are talking with Heather about plans to experiment with some harmonies together. If you are interested in attending the event, please e-mail us or RSVP on our Facebook event page.

]]>http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/peasus-nominations-worldcon-fencon-house-filk/feed/0Ragnarok comes to San Antonio!http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/ragnarok-comes-to-san-antonio/
http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/ragnarok-comes-to-san-antonio/#commentsThu, 29 Aug 2013 01:30:14 +0000http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/?p=1663[...]]]>This weekend at the 2013 World Science Fiction Convention, Sassafrass will be performing Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok for the second time ever! We hope you’ll be able to come see us at LoneStarCon 3 in San Antonio. Sundown will be from 2-4 pm on Saturday in Ballroom A. You can also see severalmembersof thegroup in other programming at Worldcon, including a special panel on the making of Sundown! You can hear us discuss “The Making of the Musical Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok” at 11 am on Sunday in Conference 12. This performance would not have been possible without the support of our fans, so thank you so much for bringing us to Worldcon.

Speaking of the support of our fans, for those of you who’ve been waiting for news of the CD, don’t worry. We are working hard on recording so that we can get it to you! The recording process is slow, but steady, and we’ll be keeping you updated as we complete songs and make progress on the DVD and CD.

Thanks again to all our fans and to LoneStarCon 3 for featuring us. See you in San Antonio!

]]>http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/ragnarok-comes-to-san-antonio/feed/0Thank you, Readercon!http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/thank-you-readercon/
http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/thank-you-readercon/#commentsFri, 19 Jul 2013 20:45:48 +0000http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/?p=1652[...]]]>As the post-Readercon reports come in, it seems the consensus is that A Most Readerconnish Miscellany was a great success! (See here and here, and many of the tweets on the #Readercon hashtag.) Sassafrass opened the evening with Somebody Will, and we were followed by an incredible variety of wonderful performances.

]]>http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/thank-you-readercon/feed/0Sassafrass at Readerconhttp://www.sassafrassmusic.com/sassafrass-at-readercon/
http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/sassafrass-at-readercon/#commentsFri, 12 Jul 2013 04:26:43 +0000http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/?p=1649[...]]]>Sassafrass is proud to be part of something unprecedented this Saturday. For the first time ever, Readercon (in Burlington, MA) will be featuring performances, as part of a two-hour variety show, called A Most Readerconnish Miscellany. From the Readercon program: “C.S.E. Cooney and Mike Allen emcee an extravagant evening of music, theater, and readings to benefit the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center and Operation Hammond. Bring cash or credit cards to make donations toward these very worthy organizations, all while being entertained by exquisite performers including Andrea Hairston and Pan Morigan, Daniel José Older, John Kessel, Sonya Taaffe, C.S.E. Cooney and Caitlyn Paxson, and a cappella group Sassafrass. Don’t miss this unforgettable event.” We hope to see you there!
]]>http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/sassafrass-at-readercon/feed/1Online Pre-Orders Now Availablehttp://www.sassafrassmusic.com/online-pre-orders-now-available/
http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/online-pre-orders-now-available/#commentsTue, 02 Jul 2013 18:51:35 +0000http://www.sassafrassmusic.com/?p=1599[...]]]>Sassafrass is delighted to announce that we now have an online method set up for pre-ordering the CD and DVD of Sundown.

The Kickstarter has closed, but since we continue to receive frequent requests from people who want to order the discs in advance, we have set up our “merchandise” page on Bandcamp to offer the CD and DVD for physical pre-order. Both are priced at $20, with $6 domestic shipping.

As of right now we do not have an option for combined shipping if you order both at once. This is because we expect the DVD to be available several months before the CD, so, for those who pre-order both, we will ship each as it becomes available.

We do not yet have it set up to let you pre-order the digital download, but if you want the digital version you can request to be put on a mailing list and we will let you know as soon as is it available. Meanwhile, our preview album contains three finished tracks from the final CD, the character themes and a bonus rough cut of the creation myth song “Ice and Fire”.